Hamas Blames Morsi's Fall on 'Zio-American' Scheme

If a light bulb goes out somewhere in the Middle East, someone will come forward to blame a Jewish conspiracy.

So when the Muslim Brotherhood's man is forced from office in the wake of massive Egyptian opposition rallies, it can't be due to his failings in office. Rather, Mohammed Morsi is the victim of a "Zio-American" scheme, senior Hamas official Salah Bardawil told Jordan's al-Sabeel newspaper earlier this week.

The goal is not only to wipe out the Muslim Brotherhood, Bardawil said, but to destroy Egypt "in service of the Zionist project in the region," al-Sabeel wrote.

The newspaper is considered to be an arm of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood.

Morsi, Bardawil said, stood by Palestinians during Pillar of Defense operation aimed at ending Hamas rocket fire from Gaza last November. "President Morsi is now being punished for his heroic stance in that war and for standing by the Palestinian resistance, through the fabricating of false cases," Bardawil said, according to a translation of the al-Sabeel article by the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Bardawil has blamed "Zio-American" conspiracies before. It's a near-reflex action for Islamists in the region, who have blamed Jews for the global drug trade, for unrest in Turkey, and for a suicide bombing at a Coptic church in Egypt.

Egypt announced last week that it was keeping Morsi in custody while it investigated possible connections between him and Hamas in plotting a 2011 jailbreak that freed Morsi and 30 other Muslim Brotherhood officials. Egyptian officials also have claimed Hamas may have had a hand in an attack last August that killed 16 soldiers.

Bardawil hit back at those allegations, saying Hamas was being set up by the Palestinian Authority and its Fatah Party.

Steven Emerson is executive director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism. Emerson was a correspondent for CNN and a senior editor at U.S. News and World Report. Read more reports from Steve Emerson — Click Here Now.